wonderful
Added 7/12/2009
Awesome.
poor hot jesse spencer just wants to please his overbearing father jeffrey rush.
altogether a really great film!
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Harvard the paradise of escapees
Added 1/26/2009
A small film about an Australian family. Supposedly a real family. But you never know. To get out of the dregs of the working class in Australia, dockworker is the father, out of a family dominated by an alcoholic father who had too many children, but in those days after the second world war it was the norm, and to do it with glory and fame, that's the objective of Tony. He did it, that young son of that family who liked the piano, who loved swimming but only had his escape in mind, becoming the best in order to get to Harvard on a full scholarship. And he did it for sure. The film insists a lot on the rivalry between the two brothers pushed by the father into swimming, and swimming the same style. The father prefers the other son and gets berserk when it is Tony who wins, and that will precipitate the end. Tony's success provides him with the scholarship he wanted and he can go and swimming becomes an exacting hobby since swimming brought him what he wanted and he does not need it any more. The rivalry between the two brothers is pathetic. The father is a disaster of a father. But the escape of Tony is just an escape and does not bring much sympathy. He just goes away. And he drops the tool he worked on for twelve years or even maybe more once he has reached the object of his desire. Something is missing at the end: I guess real life is not always as much fun as a good film and does not make more than average films.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
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Very good
Added 9/12/2008
About overcoming poverty, alcholism, family. The movie could actually have scored a little better, better than 4 stars - it was a bit too long I think. But it keeps your attention and has great acting peformances too.
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Great film!
Added 8/22/2008
This is a great movie made in Australia. Swimming upstream is approximately 97 minutes and is rated PG-13. It's a about two brothers that fight for their father's affections. Because their father is an alcoholic, he is short tempered, and mean. He favors one son over the other during their growing up years, and it shows throughout their lifetime. This movie takes place mostly in the pool. Where two brothers are coached by their father to compete in local, and out of town swim meets. The trials of growing up with a alcoholic father, and a weak mother, who is scared of her situation she lives in. This movie will keep you interested, and cheering for the underdog. Watch this movie, you will cheer, cry, and get angry, but it's a well made film. So many emotions in one movie!
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Watching Uphill
Added 5/13/2007
Swimming and writing poetry share one important characteristic; both activities can be richly satisfying to the practitioner while providing little, if any, spectator appeal. This limitation delivers a crippling blow to Swimming Upstream - without the obligatory water-churning competitions all that remains is a collection of drunken rampages and psychological tortures meted out by a deranged and permanently crippled father (Geoffrey Rush).
The film rests entirely on Rush's shoulders, and he is an amazing talent, well equal to the task. This is a man submerged in his own tortured world, incapable of asking for help or providing comfort. Instead, he revisits the cruelties and illnesses of his own childhood onto his children, passing them down like prized heirlooms. The father is an interesting character, and Rush owns him, unfortunately the screenwriter apparently dropped the scenes that might cause our perception of him to expand beyond pure loathing into some sort of understanding, if not sympathy.
Judy Davis, certainly one of the best actresses working today, wrestles with her Australian accent but offers a typically excellent performance. She has the unenviable chore of providing care for the children despite her husband's seeming determination to undermine her at every turn. Davis inhabits a doomed universe, and it is possible to see the life force draining right out of her. Despite her maternal commitment, despair is never too far away.
Superimposed on this dark canvas is a chirpy tale about a nice looking kid who wins a swim meet, goes to an Ivy League school, and gets a job on a hit TV show. It's such a spunky little parable that it actually has the nerve to ask, "If you do well for the wrong reason, if you struggle for the approval of somebody who will never give it to you and end up getting pretty good at something in process, is that such a bad thing, really?"
There is a scene where Tony (Jesse Spencer) is showing his medal to a blind drunk dad, spilling the beans, saying all the things these Stoic, macho Aussie men haven't said throughout the picture. (It's probably the performance that got him his job on House.) Tony is crying, dad is lurching, glassy-eyed like a bloated beast from the underworld. If at that moment Tony had used the medal to carve his name into dad's forehead - backwards - just so dad was reminded which son was the best swimmer every time he looked in the mirror - then maybe, just maybe, you would have something. As it is, what you've got is Disney directing 120 Days at Sodom.
0 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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wonderful
Added 7/12/2009
Awesome.
poor hot jesse spencer just wants to please his overbearing father jeffrey rush.
altogether a really great film!
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Harvard the paradise of escapees
Added 1/26/2009
A small film about an Australian family. Supposedly a real family. But you never know. To get out of the dregs of the working class in Australia, dockworker is the father, out of a family dominated by an alcoholic father who had too many children, but in those days after the second world war it was the norm, and to do it with glory and fame, that's the objective of Tony. He did it, that young son of that family who liked the piano, who loved swimming but only had his escape in mind, becoming the best in order to get to Harvard on a full scholarship. And he did it for sure. The film insists a lot on the rivalry between the two brothers pushed by the father into swimming, and swimming the same style. The father prefers the other son and gets berserk when it is Tony who wins, and that will precipitate the end. Tony's success provides him with the scholarship he wanted and he can go and swimming becomes an exacting hobby since swimming brought him what he wanted and he does not need it any more. The rivalry between the two brothers is pathetic. The father is a disaster of a father. But the escape of Tony is just an escape and does not bring much sympathy. He just goes away. And he drops the tool he worked on for twelve years or even maybe more once he has reached the object of his desire. Something is missing at the end: I guess real life is not always as much fun as a good film and does not make more than average films.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Very good
Added 9/12/2008
About overcoming poverty, alcholism, family. The movie could actually have scored a little better, better than 4 stars - it was a bit too long I think. But it keeps your attention and has great acting peformances too.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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